With increasing student enrollment in schools, class sizes are increasing to unmanageable levels. In addition, increased demand on limited financial resources prevents schools from buying new equipment, such as desks, to better handle the increased class sizes. It would be desirable, therefore, to have an inexpensive student carrel construction system that could be purchased by school systems or even teachers to build inexpensive student carrels for students to use at their desks to allow for isolated study and work areas. Because of extremely limited budgets, it would be a further benefit, if the construction system allowed the use of inexpensive materials such as discarded cardboard as the main screening material for the carrel.
Because children often bump into or knock against the carrel, it would be a further benefit to have a student carrel construction system that included a number of desk top clips for clipping the student carrel to the top of a student's desk that included a desk top contact ledge to prevent the carrel from falling from a student desk top when minor bumps and knocks are received by the student carrel.